Lippmann Coll 037

About this tablet

An administrative record from Adab (modern Bismaya, Iraq), dating to the Akkadian period, roughly 2300–2150 BCE. It tracks small allocations of pig fat (lard) and oil issued to named palace officials — including a cupbearer and a chief royal herald — along with a batch of donkey hides being processed or accounted for. Tablets like this are the daily paperwork of a Mesopotamian palace economy: even a few jars of cooking fat had to be logged, tied to a named recipient, and assigned to a responsible administrator. The presence of a 'chief herald of the king' suggests this institution had direct ties to royal court administration at Adab.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

Three jars of prime lard were issued to Ur-supa-sikil, the royal cupbearer — he received them. One jar of prime lard was returned by [...], apparently for someone whose name is broken, connected to a figure called Ani-ni; the chief royal herald was involved, and Lugal-alsa served as the responsible bailiff for that transaction. A further jar of prime oil and five donkey hides were also processed and recorded. Several lines in the middle of the tablet are too damaged to read with confidence.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

3 (jars of) prime pig-fat — (for) Ur-supa-sikil, the cupbearer: he gave (it) to him. 1 (jar of) prime pig-fat — [...]-tu returned, [...]-šè, Ani-ni (?), chief herald of the king — Lugal-alsa: its bailiff. 1 (jar of) prime oil, 5 (units of) donkey hide — was processed.

Lecture indicative — traduit sans photographie. Générée à partir de la translittération seule, sans examen de l'original. À lire comme une mise en bouche accessible, non comme une entrée de catalogue vérifiée.

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

3(asz@c) i3-szah2 sa2
ur-su3-pa-sikil
sagi
e-na-szum2
1(asz@c) i3-szah2 sa2#
[x-x]-tu# gi4
x x-sze3 a#-ni-ni
gal-nimgir#? lugal
lugal-al-sa6
maszkim#-bi#
1(asz@c) i3 sa2
5(asz@c) kusz ansze
ab#-ak

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Old Akkadian (ca. 2340-2200 BC)) — Lippmann Coll 037. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: CL 246 (Carl L. Lippmann Collection, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, Spain) — from Adab (mod. Bismaya) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P472337). source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.

~3500 BCE

Kish Tablet

Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.